By Alvin Cheng-Hin Lim

Mother’s Day Bombings and the Insurgency in Southern Thailand

August
12, 2016 — a public holiday in Thailand which celebrates Mother’s Day and the
birthday of Queen Sirikit — was marred by a series of coordinated bombings and
arson attacks across southern and central Thailand, including the tourist
resort island of Phuket and the royal beach resort of Hua Hin. The Mother’s Day
bombings were followed just over a week later on August 23 with a double
bombing in the southern provincial capital city of Pattani. The Thai military
government, fearing the impact of the bombings on tourism, quickly blamed the
political opposition for the Mother’s Day bombings, but it soon turned its
attention to the Malay Muslim insurgents of southern Thailand, in particular
the military wing of the Patani Malay National Revolutionary Front, which is
known to have previously used the same types of incendiary devices and timers
that were used in the Mother’s Day attacks.

While
the number of casualties from the August attacks remains relatively low — 5
deaths and over 60 injured — the increased geographical range of the attacks raises
questions about possible tactical changes by Thailand’s southern insurgents. As
security experts note, the coordinated Mother’s Day attacks would have involved
“a disciplined and experienced team of at least 30 operatives and support
personnel,” highlighting the significantly increased security threat facing the
military government, and especially to the vital tourism sector which accounts
for 10 percent of the Thai economy. Indeed, the governor of the Tourism
Authority of Thailand has warned that the bombings could cost the loss of
“200,000 foreign visitors and US$293 million in tourism revenue this year.” In
addition, the intensified terror campaign “risks stoking militant Buddhism and
sectarian conflict,” threatening to raise in Thailand the same Buddhist-Muslim ethno-religious
violence plaguing neighboring Myanmar (Corben, 2016; Davis, 2016; Lim, 2015b;
Murdoch, 2016; Hookway, 2016; Hookway & Watcharasakwet, 2016; “Thai
police,” 2016; “Wishing you,” 2016).

While
the Malay Muslim insurgency in Thailand’s southern provinces of Yala,
Narathiwat, and Pattani (as well as the districts of Chana, Na Thawi, Sabayoi,
Sabao, and Thepa in Songkhla province) can be traced back to the 1960s when the
separatist groups first emerged, the insurgency itself has undergone periodic
episodes of escalation. The most recent resurgence, which dates from the unprecedented
raid on an army camp in Narathiwat in January 2004 that saw the seizure by
separatists of “more than 300 weapons, including assault rifles, machine guns,
and rocket-propelled grenades,” has left over 6,700 dead and 12,000 injured (Chalk,
2008, pp. 5-9; Corben, 2016; “Thailand’s forgotten war,” 2016).

The
violence has pushed the Buddhist population in southern Thailand into armed enclaves
protected by the military, police, and even militarized Buddhist monks, with
the ironic result that “as more Buddhists settle among the enclaves, Patani’s
demography comes to favor Muslims in cities, towns and villages” (Jerryson,
2010, pp. 187-189; “The Insurgency,” 2015). This demographic change suits the
insurgents, who resent the Thai state for attempting to assimilate the Malay
Muslim population into Thai Buddhist culture, and who see the settlement of
Thai Buddhists in their traditional lands as a form of internal colonialism
(Domínguez, 2015).

Möller
(2011) reminds us that “the region affected by the conflict today is virtually identical
with the space previously occupied by the Muslim Sultanate of Patani” which
“existed from the middle of the 15th century … until its incorporation into the
Siamese state in the early 20th century,” and that the Malay Muslims who
inhabit the region today see themselves as differentiated from the Thai
Buddhist majority not just in terms of their ethnicity but also in terms of
their religion and language (pp. 7-8). As Zachary Abuza, a security expert,
notes, while “every other minority in Thailand has accepted assimilation for
the sake of citizenship,” southern Thailand’s Malay Muslims “continue to fight
against what they consider to be Thailand’s failed colonial experiment and to
defend their cultural, religious and linguistic rights” (Domínguez, 2015).

Security agencies in
Southeast Asia are working towards containing “the threat posed by more than
1,000 fighters from South-east Asia” who have served with IS.

The
first half of 2016 saw a sudden escalation in insurgent violence, with April alone
marking a sharp 46 percent increase in insurgent attacks. June 2016 — just 2
months before the Mother’s Day attacks — had 3 serious bombings that left 12
people dead. Some experts have connected this surge in violence to a court
verdict in December 2015 that allowed the Thai government to seize land in
Pattani that had been owned by a Malay Muslim religious school. This event significantly
heightened tensions between the Malay Muslim population and the Thai state (Rajakumar,
2016a; Rajakumar, 2016b). Experts have also noted that the Mother’s Day
bombings came shortly after the August 7, 2016 constitutional referendum held
by the Thai military government, which was rejected by voters in the southern
provinces due in large part to the Malay Muslim population’s perception of the
draft charter as a vehicle for Thai Buddhist nationalism, which they recognized
as a threat to their religion and culture (Abuza, 2016; Rujivanarom &
Samerpop, 2016).

The
Thai government has sought cooperation from their Malaysian counterparts to
pursue several Mother’s Day bombing suspects who may have fled across the border
into Malaysia (Holmes, 2016; “Phuket bombing suspect,” 2016). The cross-border movement
of Thailand’s Malay Muslim separatists raises the possibility of infiltration
into the southern Thai insurgency by Malaysian jihadists who have returned from
the Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq. This prospect is alarming given that
the Malaysian IS network has recently conducted its first successful attack on
Malaysian soil — a grenade attack in late June on a nightclub. While the
Malaysian police were prompted by this terrorist attack to launch a crackdown,
experts warn that the IS network could continue to expand and launch further
attacks across Malaysia (Jennings, 2016; “Malaysia nabs,” 2016; “Malaysian police,”
2016). The Malaysian government is aware that about 100 Malaysians are currently
serving with IS’ Southeast Asian contingent in Syria and Iraq, and they have
identified “at least 70 former members of the military” who have “volunteered
for the Islamic State” (Ignatius, 2016). The possibility of Malaysia’s jihadist
network expanding across the border into southern Thailand should not be
discounted. Indeed, Rafi bin Udin, a Malaysian IS jihadist, recently called for
terrorist attacks against Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries in an IS
propaganda video released online in June (Ehrlich, 2016).

Thailand’s
southern insurgents are known to have previously rejected overtures from global
jihadist organizations like al Qaeda. While IS does not appear to have
penetrated Thailand’s southern insurgent groups yet, this remains a possible
threat for the future, and “Thai security agencies are cognizant of and
preparing for possible IS spillover effects from Indonesia, Malaysia, and the
Philippines” (Crispin, 2016; Hookway & Watcharasakwet, 2016). Indeed, while
IS has been identified by regional security agencies as “expanding its
operations in countries in the region, including Indonesia, Malaysia, the
Philippines and Thailand,” some militants from southern Thailand have also been
identified as having travelled to Syria and Iraq to serve with IS (Hussain,
2015; Cochrane, 2016; Than, 2016). Significantly, social media posts from
earlier this year propagated a map of southern Thailand with the black flag of
IS superimposed over the contested territories, suggesting an IS-led
restoration of the old Sultanate of Patani (Rajakumar, 2016b).

The
seriousness of the threat posed by IS jihadists infiltrating Thailand’s southern
insurgency is illustrated by the case of Bahrun Naim, an Indonesian jihadist
who has been working with IS to rebuild the terrorist network in the city of
Solo in central Java. Despite being physically based in IS’ Syrian capital of
Raqqa, Naim has used digital tools like “social media and messaging apps” to
build “an ever-more sophisticated network of militants,” with the effect that
“the risk of a major attack in Indonesia is growing” (Fabi & Kapoor, 2016).
Naim’s digital work is part of IS’ global outreach strategy of producing high
quality digital content which “is fresh and more enticing to Sunni millennials,
the primary demographic for recruitment” (Selby, 2016). In the case of southern
Thailand, such outreach could create a new generation of insurgents. Already,
IS recruiters have launched Al Fatihin,
an online publication which has content in Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa
Indonesia, and which is targeted at “Malay-speaking supporters in Malaysia,
Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei and southern Thailand” (“The Insurgency,” 2015; “Al
Fatihin,” 2016; “ISIS online newspaper,” 2016).

Looking
to the future, security agencies in Southeast Asia are working towards
containing “the threat posed by more than 1,000 fighters from South-east Asia”
who have served with IS, as well as “several hundred terror convicts in
Indonesia whose jail terms end in the next few years.” These agencies’ proposed
counterterrorism measures include “the systematic exchange of biometric
information like fingerprints on known militants and terror convicts”
(Soeriaatmadja & Lim, 2016). With IS having sent “hundreds of thousands of
dollars to Southeast Asia to plan, prepare and execute attacks,” such regional
cooperation on counterterrorism measures has become even more urgent (Ehrlich,
2016).

For
Thailand, the continued or intensified insurgency in its southern provinces will
endanger plans for economic investment and rehabilitation, including long-term blueprints
by China to construct either a canal through the Isthmus of Kra in southern
Thailand as part of its 21st Century Maritime Silk Road megaproject, or a
high-speed railway running through the same region connecting the Malaysian
capital of Kuala Lumpur with Bangkok (Lim, 2015a, p. 36; “Construction of
Pan-Asian,” 2015). Indeed, should Thailand’s southern insurgency intensify and
become part of IS’ jihadist assault on Southeast Asia, the entire Southeast
Asian region could lose the precious social and economic gains it had achieved
over the past several decades. Faced with this threat, it is imperative that
the security apparatuses of Southeast Asia’s nations cooperate on effective
counterterrorism measures.

References

Abuza,
Z. (2016, August 13). Two suspects in Thailand’s blasts. New Mandala. Retrieved from
http://www.newmandala.org/two-suspects-thailands-blasts/

Al
Fatihin: A newspaper for Malay-speaking IS militants. (2016, July 11). Malay Mail. Retrieved from
http://www.themalaymailonline.com/malaysia/article/al-fatihin-a-newspaper-for-malay-speaking-is-militants

Ignatius,
D. (2016, August 18). Southeast Asia could be a haven for displaced Islamic
State fighters. Washington Post.
Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/southeast-asia-could-be-a-haven-for-displaced-islamic-state-fighters/2016/08/18/c2213b28-6566-11e6-96c0-37533479f3f5_story.html

About The Author

Alvin Cheng-Hin Lim is a research fellow with International Public Policy Pte. Ltd. (IPP), and is the author of Cambodia and the Politics of Aesthetics (Routledge 2013). He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and has taught at Pannasastra University of Cambodia and the American University of Nigeria. Prior to joining IPP, he was a research fellow with the Longus Institute for Development and Strategy.